Being Dragged Off to Hell (or if being clever, Descending To A Lower Plane Of Existence) is a common villain fate, especially for those who previously made a Deal with the Devil. In an inversion of Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, they are dragged off screaming by some kind of eldritch force (generally in the form of a bunch of arms reaching out for them), leaving no body behind.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

This is the fate of pretty much any Apostle that dies in Berserk. We see two examples in the course of the manga: the Count after he refuses to sacrifice his daughter to save his life and be reborn, and Wyald after Zodd rips him in half for trying to kill Griffith before the Eclipse.

It's also the inevitable fate of everyone who gets branded for sacrifice (no exceptions), gets killed by an apostle or was unwittingly working for one (lots of people) or is filled with hatred at the moment of their death (life in Midland is cruel, so even more candidates available). Hell is a really crowded place in this universe...at least, if you get "lucky", you have a chance to "merely" become a restless spirit that haunts the area in which it died.

This happens to one Hollow (or specifically, the soul of the serial killer that turned into said Hollow) in Bleach. When most Hollows are killed they evaporate and go to the Soul Society, having been purified and allowed to continue in the cycle of reincarnation between the two worlds. In this guy's case the gates of Hell appeared behind him and a giant arm impaled him on a sword and dragged him through. This is what happens to any human who committed grave sins of their own free will in life, as opposed to after transformation into a Hollow.

In the fourth movie, this happens to Ichigo's younger sister Yuzu. Ichigo and some of his friends have to literally go to Hell to rescue her.

At the end of Fullmetal Alchemist, Father, the Big Bad is dragged screaming into the Gate of Truth and receives an Ironic Hell. By extension, this is the fate of any alchemist who attempts to resurrect the dead, although after being taken, they are sent back alive (minus an organ or limb).

If you consider the "In Memorium" omakes to be canon, then Shou Tucker's fate is ultimately this (since we see Nina and Alexander in Heaven, while he's being engulfed by flames below). Given that no other villain save Father receives such a fate, this says a lot about Tucker.

In Part 4 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, there is an alley in the town of Morioh inhabited by the ghost of Reimi Sugimoto, victim of serial killer Yoshikage Kira. The only way to proceed safely through the alley is to turn after walking twenty feet, and to not look back: otherwise, the hands of a hundred ghosts will drag you to hell in pieces. Koichi was barely saved by Rohan wiping his memory of looking behind. Yoshikage Kira is not so lucky and this is how he's ultimately defeated.

This is essentially the premise of Hell Girl. By entering into a contract with Enma Ai, those who use Hell Correspondence can have those who have grievously wronged them (or as evidenced in later arcs, just pissed them off) sent to Hell, with the price being their own damnation upon death.

Losing a Bakugan Brawl when a Doom Card is in play automatically results in being sucked into the Doom Dimension for the unlucky Bakugan that loses, which is pretty much the Bakugan Hell. Thankfully, the Brawlers win a bet that allows all the Bakugan sent there to be set free after being sent there themselves. According to Word of God, this happened to Naga when he was defeated, though we don't see it.

The Gehenna Gate in Blue Exorcist contains a bunch of figures and resembles a ball pit. Should anyone go into the gate, the figures latch on and drag them down; a fate the protagonist narrowly avoids.

This happed to all the Dark Signers in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds after losing to the Signers, even the ones who didn't deserve it, although it was a subversion in that there was no screaming or flashy display involved; they simply turned to dust. Fortunately, all of them except the two Godwin brothers were revived later, given another chance by the Crimson Dragon.

In the original "Yu-Gi-Oh!" anime, Yami Bakura does this to Bonz, Sid, and Zygor. After Bonz loses a Shadow Duel in which the loser would die, Bonz is dragged into the ground by an unknown force, along with Sid and Zygor, into the Shadow Realm (Yu-Gi-Oh!'s equivalent of Hell). The original scene from the manga had Bakura simply kill Bonz, which was a bit more gruesome, although not as severe.

In InuYasha, whenever the eyes the Soul Piper spirit are fully open, it drags the spirits of children into hell. This was almost the fate of Mayu, the spirit of a little girl who died in a fire.

Comics

Depending on your interpretation, this may be the final fate of the eponymous Cerebus the Aardvark, as he's dragged into "the light", screaming out to God to save him. Given Dave Sim's....peculiar...religious views and how they influenced the latter third of the comic, this certainly seems to fit the trope, but Sim threw a monkey wrench into things by saying in his notes for the last issue that Cerebus may have actually been going to Heaven and was just panicking needlessly at the last second.

Anton Arcane's most despicable act in Swamp Thing is condemning his own niece Abby, who didn't even come close to deserving it, to this horrible fate.

The villains in the Tintin story The Broken Ear are dragged off to hell after drowning. Notable for being the only depiciton of a bad afterlife in the entire series.

The final fate of Palpatine in Dark Empire. Having cheated death by Body Surfing, he is finally defeated when the Force Ghost of a Jedi grabs his spirit and departs for the afterlife.

A more mundane variant in B.P.R.D. in that there's no dimensional transfer, but after Katha-Hem is destroyed Pope is dragged off by the frogs, servants of the Ogdru-Hem. When he's next seen he no longer has any desire but to serve them, and may no longer be human.

In the Stanley and His Monster revival mini-series, the Monster got dragged down to Hell... by an angel. Naturally, Stanley (an ordinary 5-year-old boy) goes to get his best friend back.

Judge Dredd: At the end of "The Wilderness Days", arch-villain Judge Death is thrown into Hell by an ascended man who pursued him for weeks to get justice for his dead family. The angel opens a portal to Hell and Death is dragged off by the souls of the billions of people he had murdered.

In Corpse Bride, this is the fate of Lord Barkus after the dead learn it was he who murdered Emily.

Miss Plumm (Ominously): New arrival...

Dr. Facilier's fate in The Princess and the Frog is being dragged off by his "friends on the other side" after Tiana destroys the voodoo charm, triggering a You Have Failed Me scenario. note Contrary to what some believe, however, Facilier is not taken specifically to Hell, as the Loa are not demons, nor do they have any relation to the Christian concept of Hell. Not that it makes the scene any better.

All Dogs Go to Heaven: Subverted. At the climax, as Charlie is saying his last goodbye, a huge demonic dragon (implied to be the Devil himself) comes to drag his soul to hell (since he gave up his place in heaven to return to Earth) but thankfully for him, Anabelle comes to take him back to heaven because he'd died in a Heroic Sacrifice.

The bulldog antagonist made a pact with the demonic Big Bad Red (who is, of course, a cat). At the end, he gets dragged to hell with the revelation that he sold his soul - thinking that all he was selling was the soles of his shoes.

This was also Red's fate, after Charlie defeats him and frees his captives. Charlie claims 'his boss yanked his chain', implying the Devil himself was responsible.

Happens to Hades, the King of the Dead, at the end of Hercules, by his own subjects no less.

At the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo gets weighed down into a sea of molten lead at the bottom of the Notre Dame cathedral by a sinister-looking gargoyle (which seems to come alive), which is quite symbolic of this trope in a movie crammed full of religious symbolism. His last words (where he quotes directly from The Bible no less) make it even better.

Frollo: And he shall smite the wicked and plunge them into the fiery pit!

Films — Live-Action

This is the ultimate goal of the Gypsy Curse placed upon the protagonist of Drag Me to Hell. She fails to break the curse in time and ultimately suffers this fate.

Ghost: When both of Sam Wheat's murderers are killed (the hitman who carried on the crime and the "friend" who ordered the hit itself), a group of small shadowy creatures appear and drag their spirits to the underworld.

Satan shows up in person to drag John Constantine to Hell in Constantine for his two suicides. However, as his second suicide not only helped save the world, by calling Satan to collect his soul John gets him to deal with an usurper, John asked for the soul of the sister of a friend who was trapped in hell to be free. This selfless act redeems John and he ends up getting dragged off to Heaven; the best Satan can do is to heal Constantine's cancer, dragging him back to Earth. Only in order to give him another chance to screw up, but it's Satan, after all.

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny does this twice with Satan: First in a flashback explaining the origins of the Pick of Destiny, and secondly at the climax of the movie when JB seals Satan back in Hell after breaking his horn. In both cases, though, there aren't really any hands - it's an invisible force which does the (very forceful) dragging - though there are pentagram-style portals to the underworld involved.

Lady van Tassel's eventual fate with the Hessian whom she cursed to make her servant of revenge at the end of Sleepy Hollow.

In the Syfy flick Rock Monster, the animated stone giant drops through a magma-filled crack in the earth, and it grabs its villainous conjurer and pulls him down with it. It's strongly implied that they wind up in Hell, not just underground.

In Redhead behind the Looking Glass, the villan suffers this fate when the heroine's mother (whom he had previously used as Hostage for MacGuffin) tells him "Oh, go to hell!"... while holding the Wishing Nut in her hand.

In Hobo with a Shotgun, the psycho Slick, after being shot by the Hobo, is spiritually carried away to Hell in the charred school bus that he previously incinerated a bunch of little kids in.

Folk Lore

Pretty much the norm in the traditional Faust legend and any Deal with the Devil story in which a) the human doesn't win, or repent in time, and b) doesn't just go to Hell after death.

Literature

In the Dragon Knight series, this happened to the evil magickian Malvinne after one of his deathtraps encroached on the Kingdom of the Dead (which in this setting is an actual place).

In the second Black London book, Demon Bound, it's what's supposed to happen, but Jack Winter just sort of willingly goes along to hell after lots of having tried to get out of it already because his Deal with the Devil deadline is up.

In The Hollows series, if a demon escapes from a summoning circle, it can do whatever it wants to you, up to and including taking you to the demonic underworld.

The Deal with the Devil story Enoch Soames has the title character dragged off after Satan grants his wish to see his standing among writers 100 years in the future (it turns out to be nonexistent). This makes for a case of Ironic Name, since the Biblical Enoch experienced the opposite trope.

Live Action TV

At various points during the second series of Being Human, the forces of purgatory repeatedly try to drag Annie (not a villain) into the afterlife. They succeed in the finale.

In the 1970s British Time Travel show Timeslip the villain is dragged screaming through a time portal at the end. Whatever's on the other side will probably be pretty hellish for him.

Almost happens to Spike on Angel, but avoided by turning Pavayne, the ghost trying to do so, into a human.

Katherine Pierce, from The Vampire Diaries, after having evaded death countless times throughout the series, including when her real body died (after which she hitched a ride in Elena's and took over), Katherine is finally dead (which, despite her becoming something of an Ensemble Darkhorse early on in the show, is a relief at this point given how one-note her character had become), and after dropping a revelation on Bonnie, is actually ready to go to the other side. She touches Bonnie, and then... nothing happens. Until a great gust of wind comes from nowhere, and something grabs Katherine by the ankles and yanks her, screaming and clawing at the floor, into a nameless black abyss. The kicker? Her spirit was in a Church when this happens.

A common plot device in any RPG with a fantastic bent. Some Dungeons & Dragons modules have this befalling the Big Bad of the story, half the time due to a botched attempt to summon something from the Lower Planes or the Far Realm or some other place of big bad nastiness.

In 4E, several Warlock powers (such as the epic-level Hurl Through Hell) have this effect. It's (usually) not final for the unfortunate target. But even a drop-by to a local Cthulhu might be unhealthy to the mind. (In game terms, Hurl Through Hell does 10 to 70 points of damage to the victim - usually enough to kill him, but if it doesn't, he is returned to the mortal world, likely scared, but alive. The Warlock casting the spell can use a minor action to delay the victim's return for one combat round, but no more than three times, and using a minor action isn't always easy; it depends on a lot of factors.)

An Epic Level Spell mentioned in the Epic Level Handbook called Damnation is far more powerful. This not only sends the victim to Hell, it prevents him from trying to leave for twenty hours (convincing him that he is dead and has been sent to Hell as punishment for a life of sin). Even if he survives by the time the twenty hours expire, he has to find a way to escape on his own. (Naturally, being an Epic Level Spell, this isn't easy to learn, much less cast. It has a Spellcraft DC of 97 which means, as far as Epic Spells go, seriously difficult to learn.)

There is an incredibly rare and powerful magical item (considered a minor artifact in most editions) called a Talisman of Pure Good which can inflict this fate upon an evil divine spellcaster. However, only the purest and most faithful of good divine spellcasters can actually use it. There is also a Talisman of Ultimate Evil, a device that does the opposite. (Both these devices can only be used a limited number of times, and if one appears in a module, it usually has two charges - at most - remaining.)

Exalted have this as the backstory of any and allGreen Sun Princes. Writing the details will necessitate several gallons of Brain Bleach, but let's just say that it involves being eaten alive by demons and then having your body reconstituted with the essence of Hell.

Warhammer has several spells that cause this effect - mostly Chaos (specifically Tzeentchian spells) but also some like the Lore of Life spell The Dwellers Below, which has the spirits of nature itself drag victims through the ground to an unknown, but definitely nasty, fate.

The New World of Darkness book Inferno introduces Hell and its metaphysics to the setting. It's perfectly possible to open a gate to Hell... but when it pops open, everyone in the immediate vicinity has to fight not to get dragged in (and if they fail, there's no coming back). It also happens in a metaphysical sense, as everyone who looks on the mouth of Hell has to make a Morality check - not because they did anything wrong, but because they stared into the incarnation of all sin, and that can screw with even saints.

Theater

In pretty much every version of the Don Juan story (including Molina's original, Molière's Dom Juan, and Mozart's Don Giovanni), Juan accepts an invitation from a statue of someone he murdered, the father of one of his conquests, and when the statue returns for him, a portal opens up into Hell and Juan enters.

Subverted in Goethe's Faust (Part Two): When Faust lies dying, Mephistopheles and his devils make ready to collect his soul. However, angels distract Mephistopheles so that Faust's soul can go to Heaven, claiming that Faust has never ceased to strive for good and thus has earned redemption.

This was the fate of J. Wellington Wells from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer.

In the stage musical version of Mary Poppins, the evil Miss Andrew who replaces Mary and rules tyrannically over the children eventually gets locked into a giant birdcage by her predecessor and sent to hell. Mary got her job back.

Shinnok in Mortal Kombat 4 has a fatality where a giant skeleton hand emerges from a portal, grabs the victim, squeezes until their head pops off, and then goes back into the portal with the body, leaving the head.

Scorpion in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe has a fatality where he disappears into hell, and then drags his victim down through the floor. A few seconds later, their skeleton is thrown back out.

Scorpion's fatality in Mortal Kombat Trilogy had a giant skeletal hand reach out of the ground to drag the opponent below.

In Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Scorpion and his opponent are teleported to hell, in which a bunch of Scorpion clones pop out of the lava to savage the opponent to death.

In Mortal Kombat 9, Noob Saibot uses this as his basic throwing attack. One of his fatalities has his shadow begin to drag the victim into hell, but as soon as the shadow is below the portal, Noob Saibot closes it off, cutting the victim in half.

It should be noted that Scorpion's ending in Deadly Alliance, which provides the page image, is actually not an example of this trope, as the "soulnado" he is tossed into is a path to heaven, not hell.

Persona 4 has a nominal example: Izanami, the True Final Boss uses an attack called "Summons to Yomi," instantly killing any character who's at critical health, as well as Thousand Curses, which she uses on you at the very end of the battle, and which involves the very creepy image of lots of hands dragging the character it's hit by off to...somewhere.

Persona 4: The Animation gave an explanation that the attacked dragged the the victims into a Lotus-Eater Machine where everything they saw was shaped by whatever they wanted to see the most. What we saw of it from Yu, however, makes it look like an Ironic Hell (especially since Izanami intended this to be an act of compassion feeling that was what humans wanted) since Yu's desire to not leave his friends in Inaba meant what he was experiencing was a Ground Hog Day Loop of the day before he left Inaba.

In Bayonetta, whenever you finish off a boss, it gets dragged to hell by a bunch of clawing red arms. Also happens to Bayonetta on the game over screen if you choose not to continue.

The sequel reveals that all Umbra Witches get dragged off to hell when they die, not just Bayonetta. This is proven in full force when a trailer shows Jeanne getting this treatment.

Rodin: Dead witches get dragged to hell... It is what it is.

The actual game reveals that while this does happen to Jeanne, she's being taken as a hostage in this case, requiring Bayonetta to mount an Orphean Rescue.

A variation is used in Planescape: Torment - there is a high level spell that does it, opening a portal to the Abyss under the target, resulting in him being pulled in by some demons For Massive Damage

Also happens to the protagonist himself at the end of the game, unless he imagines himself out of existence.

Silent Hill 1 - Happens to Dr. Kaufman if he survives to the end of the game.

Doom 3 has this happen with you. No, seriously. You survive and proceed to chew up Hell, though.

In Theme Hospital, when a patient dies, they either float up to heaven as angels, or the ground opens up beneath them and they sink in a fiery pit.

According to many fans, this is what Akuma/Gouki's Shun Goku Satsu move does: pulls both him and his victim to the underworld, where they're set upon by demons based on how evil their souls are. In fact, God Never Said That.

In Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, many of the boss fights end with a defeated boss being dragged off by something. The Lich is probably closest to the literal trope.

Expect a temporary visit to Tartarus to be a feature of every God of War game.

It's a well known fact among videogame players that death's revolving door was inaugurated in Tartarus by Hades entirely for Kratos' personal use.

At the end of The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, Malefor meets his demise when he's grabbed by a group of dragon spirits whom are heavily implied to be the souls of his elders, who drag him down screaming into the core of the planet to an unknown but likely horrific and well-deserved fate.

In Dark Souls there is a pitch black void called the Abyss that requires a special ring to enter, presumably because of the several hundred foot drop required to enter it. However, if you unequip the ring before defeating the boss your character is horrifyingly dragged into the darkness. You even get a special deaths screen saying "You were consumed by the Abyss."

The death animation of the Overlord series has the Overlord sink into a portal below his feet while his minions blow up all around him.

The defeat animation in Pirate101 for the cursed monquistadors combines this with Winged Soul Flies Off at Death. A fissure appears below them and a large red flaming hand reaches up and grabs them dragging their body into the gap but leaves their soul which has angel wings and a halo and flies off into a patch of clouds that appear.

Grim can do this to people in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, but he saves it for people who really piss him off, like The Boogeyman, proving that, unless you're a really smart little kid, messing with Death is a very, very bad idea. He's occasionally seen doing his job of reaping people, but he says there are a large number of afterlives so it's likely not all of them are taken to Hell.

While it seemed unlikely that this could ever happen in a cartoon like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) the ancient dragon Granamyr was able to do just that, if the "Realm of Demons", as he called it, was anything like Hell. He threatened to banish He-Man and Teela there in his first appearance, and in his second appearance, he proved this was not a bluff, as he actually did it to an evil dragon. (Long story short, Granamyr is not someone you mess with.)

It is worth noting that unlike the princesses, who were sent through a portal, and unlike the first time Tirek was imprisoned when he was sent through the gate, second time around Tirek is blasted to hell.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Its Sequel SeriesThe Legend of Korra reveals this to be true for Avatar's Admiral Zhao. Contrary to fans' beliefs, the Water Spirit didn't kill Zhao when it dragged him down into the ocean. It sent him to the Fog of Lost Souls, an almost inescapable place that traps whoever is in it and drives them insane. Zhao's spirit has been wandering the Fog for a good seventy years and has gone completely mad. It's not a literal example, but it comes close.

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